THOMAS HARDY.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 871, 18 July 1910, Page 9

THOMAS HARDY.

SOME ASPECTS. BS SEEN FROM NEW ZEALAND.

(By J.Q.X.)

'A. knighthood for Mr. Quiller-Couch, a Civil List pension. for Mr. Richard IWbiteing', tho Order of Merit for Mr. JThomas Hardy—of these honours "which the new King has bestowed on literature, the last-mentioned will give tho largest; amount of satisfaction to tho readers of books. Since Meredith, Swinburne, and Mark Twain aro gone, 1 suppose most' competent judges aro agreed that Mr. Hardy is tho greatest, living -writer of the English language. Critics may think very highly of ono new writer or another, but if "greatness" implies not only great qualities, but also a wide and secure reputation and a large body of achievement, then ■ the most cautious appraiser of literary values will hardly withhold the superlative from Thomas Hardy. Yet I suppose that to many New Zealanders tho Wessox novels aro as little known as Wessex itself. Somo perhaps have been deterred from reaii- ■ ing them by a vague notion that they are full of an uncouth dialect, and that their local colour restricts them to a local appreciation. That is quite a mistake The conversations of Hardy's rustics aro done from tho life, but without any attempt at phonetic accirracy. He has left that for his neighbour, the late William Barnes,-thepoet. The characteristics of West Country speech are indicated in the novels, but not insisted on. Hardy i 3 concerned much less with the rustic's pronunciation than with his mind. The result is a literary presentment, riot merely of •the Wessex, but of tho English peasant —perhaps the universal peasant—and it is a presentment so subtle'and yet so vivid, so humorous yet so serious, so faithful and so kindly, so lifelike and so ideal, that its accompaniment of thoughtful laughter is independent of latitude, longitude) or-accident of birth. Not to enjoy Hardy's rustics is to bo a person- of sadly imperfect sympathies. They belong to literature more than to Dorsetshire. ' . . As with the people, so with tho terlitory. The novelist himself has told rus that when he 'borrowed tho name of Wessex from the pages or early English history, and applied it to the district formerly included in that ancient kingdom, he,thought to reserve it to "the horizons and landscapes of a merely realistic dream-country." Ho was doubtless fully sensible of tho compliment which the public paid him by taking up the word as "a practical provincial definition." For the pleasure of; those others who liked to recognise Shaftesbury in his "Shastbn," Dorchester in "Casterbridge," Cerne Abbas in "Abbot's Cernel," and the rest, he even drew the map which is printed in somo editions of the novels. Yet ho asked "all good and gentle readers to be so kind as to forget" that "the dream country has solidified into a utilitarian region which people can go to, take a house in, and write to the papers from . .-'■. '.and to refuse . steadfastly to bolievo that there are any inhabitants of a Victorian Wessex outside the pages: . . . ■~ in which their lives and conversations --are- detailed." Thus it may well be questioned whe-, ther a -West of: England native,' like , myself, is.as well equipped for appreciation 1 of these 'groat novels as a New -Zealonder. '.y. My ' knowledge, -.. of.. . the south-western counties may' mako it 'less easy for me to find Weseex more relevant geography of the Land East- of tho Sun and West of the Moon. -..,'. ..■■■•■ -Not for a moment would I seem to say that, Hardy's descriptions are not true to'the actual scenes. Bating such confessed liberties as the removal of Bathsheba's old Jacobean house a mile .or so from its original position, and the uniting of several real heaths to give ample verge to the sombre waste of Egdon, these pictures in words are as accurate as photographs. Yet they aro used imaginatively. They aro not inserted, as scenic half-tones from the iTourist Department might be inserted in a New .Zealand novel. They are parts- of the artistic, whole, liko Mr. Hilaire Belloc's sketches, in "Tho.Path to Rome,"- but .the unity is more, com--..plete, and.the art.far greater. Imaginativei;'-writers-may oither invent an environment or find one. . Shakespeare makes an island for his Prospero, a Forest of Arden for his Rosalind. -.Hardy, requiring a medieval home for modern Paula, selects Stancy Castle.' He needs a scene for tragedy, and he finds the very colour and shapo of the ground on Egdon -Heath. His rustics must have a place to gossip .fiver their cups, and, there could be none fitter than the real ancient malthouso at Weatherbury. The descriptions of places in "Tess of the D'TJrbervilles," for instance, nre at onco truthful and imaginative. They are part of' the story.. Tess >'s wronged in the 'wilds of Cranbourne ' Cirase, is happy and loved in the rich, soft Vale ef Froom, toils forlorn at bleak Flintcomb' Ash, and every phase of her history has. its' appropriate setting. In the conception of somo' of the . stories the scene may havo served the author as a suggestion for character and incident, hilt in the result, where the work is strongest, the environment, though much topographical study, mu,ch traditional lore have gone to its making, is subordinate to the characters and the plot. The student of architecture, the collector of folk tales, the writer of county histories can use these volumes as works of reference,' but Hardy's Wessex is, in his own subtlyaccurate .phrase, '.'a realistic dreamcountry:" In what is to mo, so far as I have tead, Hardy's greatest descriptive panGage, the "dream" is a vision of civilised man. No- "characters" are introduced in that wonderful picture of Egdon Heath, which fills the first ■chapter of "The Return of the Native." "A placo perfectly accordant with mail's natare—neither ghastly, hateful, nor ugly; neither common- • place,'unmeaning, nor tamo; but, like man, slighted and enduring." "The description of the heath is also a 'revelation of tho author's view of human life. - ■ • ■ "It was a spot which returned upon tho memory of thoso who loved it with an aspect of peculiar and kindly congruity. Smiling champaigns of flowers and fruit ■ " hardly do this, for they are permanently harmonious only with an . existence of better reputation as to its issues than the present. Twilight combined with the scenery of Egdon Heath to evolvo a thing majestic without severity, impressive without showiness, omphatic ' in its admonitions, grand in its simplicity." Hardy goes on to question whether we havo not almost outgrown the lovo for -the charming aud fair in natural ecoßory. "Tho new Vale of Tempo may Iμ n gaunt wasto in Thulc: human souls may find themselves, in closer and closer harmony with external things wearing a sombroness distasteful to our race when it "was - .young." Further on in tho same book, Hardy rttritea in. much tho same way of tho ifeunaa- -face, Hβ suggests that "the

view of life ns a thing to bo put up with" is replacing "that zest tor existence which was so intense in early civilisation," aud that tnereioro beauty in man and wuniau is passing away, and that tho typical countenance of tno i'uturo "will bo less a picture than a record." Here I think wo have the most powerful hindramn to Thomas hardy's popularity in New Zealand. This, as wo aro told on ovory platform, is a young country.. It lono\\s that soinbrexiess neib is distasteiul. Tho colonial, in spite of some U-onbius, oitnur <;ii;u,)b or expects good tunes, his thoughts are less of emluriug than pi achieving. Ho does not welcome die view of Ino as a tiling to ho put up with. He does not admit that "a-long lino of disilluslvo ceuturieb" havo made "revelling in iho general situation" seem ou& 0.1 daw;. But, however young the country, tho individual grows old; however hopeful tho nation, men ami womeu have their sorrows. There must be many in Mow Zealand to whom tho novels of Thomas Hardy, even thoso which are in~essence tragedies, will have "an aspect of peculiar and kindly congruity." Hardy paints the snadows, not because ho otiooses, but because, he must. Indeed, it is a part of his greatness that he is not wilt'ui, nor atfcetecl, nor mannered,- does not exaggerate, is not rhetorieiii, loves moderation —and Simplicity. His 'mirror ot' life does not magnify nor be-little, nor distort. Somo of tho characters in his books aro heroic, some despicable, somo humorous, but they are all men and women. Ho Eiyes us no Falstaff. Don Quixote, or Mieawber, hut his people aro tho people wo meet and live with. They aro ourselves. If we may regard them as typ;;s, it must be, not as types of this or that virtue or failing, but of humanity, They aro portrayed with tho calm, intense truthfulness of a master artist. They live. • . . . Ono who will live as long ns 'any is Marty South in "The Woodlanders." She is an embodiment of tho glory that is in defeat, the triumph in. disappointment, the joy of the unfulfilled. This is ono (if the lamps that light the- Hardian gloom. As she stands besido tho grave of tho man she has greatly and silently" loved, while tho only visible light upon her slim figure falls from the pale moon, she seems to hold bea-con-b'ko, this serene, far-shining lamp. Another —but by no means the only other—illumination of these shadows comes from a cultivated sense of the pleasuro that is to bo had in trie joys of other people. Many of Hardy's pages shine with this light. He wrote in a recently-published poem: "JProm manuscripts of tender song Inspired by scenes &nd souls unknown, I'll pour out raptures that belong To others, as they were my own." And fourteen years ago, ho said in one of his reticently self-revealing prefaces that; as some of the Wessex novels addressed themselves more especially to those into whoso souls the iron had entered, so he hoped "A Laodicean" might please "that largo and happy, section of the reading public which has riot yet reached ripeness of years ; those, to whom marriage is the pilgrim's Eternal City, -and" not a milestone on tho way." I have not been ablo to indicate here all that I have found in the Wessex novels, and doubtless there is much high pleasure'in them that I have not .vet discovered. And then there arn Hardy's other writings, The verses which be has published during the fourteen years since the appearance of his last novel have set him high among the Perhaps his drama of the Napoleonic wars, "The Dynasts," may win him still higher place, and 'I like to think that although he has reach'ed the "allotted span," ho may even yet publish some monumental work in pure (philosophy. He is -greaVond it is not for little men to play at measuring him.